Yaakov Jaffe
This is the third posting in a series about the Kinnot of the 9th of Av. For the first two postings, click here and here.
Rabbi Meir of Rottenberg (Maharam), leader of Ashkenazic (German) Jewry in the latter half of the thirteenth century, is most well-known as a Tosafist, halakhic decisor, and author of numerous responsa. In addition to these legal contributions, he also composed one Kinnah for the Ninth of Av, “Sha’ali Serufah Ba-Eish,” about the burning of the Talmud in 1242. Typically recited as one of the last Kinnot of the day, this lament reflects on the pain felt upon the Talmud’s burning.
The historical background of the tragedy is briefly summarized in lines 17-18 of the Kinnah, and is explained at length in other sources.[1] The apostate Nicholas Donin made a series of accusations against the Talmud in 1240, leading to a famed disputation between him and the Rabbis, led by Yehiel of Paris. Two years later, the Talmud was burned during the month of Tammuz. The Kinnah laments how the 3rd month, when the Torah was given in Biblical times, later became forever connected to the 4th month, when it was burnt in medieval times. The burning of the Talmud is foreshadowed by the historical breaking of the tablets on the 17th of that month (as per Taanit 26b): “he repeated in his foolishness[2] to burn Law in fire…”[3]
Sha’ali Serufa Ba-Eish is a literary triumph whose true depth of meaning is often missed by those reading the words on Tisha B-av. The Kinnah is patterned after “Tzion Halo Tish’ali,” the famous Kinnah of Rabbi Yehudah Ha-Levi, and its structure (68 lines, of ten long syllables each, and every other line rhyming with each other) and rhyme scheme (with each line ending –rayikh in Ha-Levi’s Kinnah and and –layikh in Maharam’s) echo the earlier lament of the loss of Zion. The selection of this specific poetic form makes a thematically profound statement that the loss and love of the Torah and Talmud parallels the loss and love of Israel in the life of the religious Jew. Beyond the formal qualities, some of the lines even make allusion to Ha-Levi’s lament. Maharam’s first line mirrors Ha-Levi’s, opening with a direct address to a female addressee, begging that she ask (the root sh-a-l) for the peace of the Jewish people, with the word li-shlom as the fourth word of each Kinnah.[4] Later, Ha-Levi speaks of the graves of Moshe and Aharon (located at Mt. Ha-Avaraim and Mt. Ha-Har), while Maharam (ln. 15-16) also says that he will cry until his tears reach the graves of Moshe and Aharon at Mt. Ha-Har. Both ask rhetorically how can food be pleasing (“eikh ye’erav ekhol” in line 19 is a direct quote from Ha-Levi) following this tragedy.[5] In the 4th line of his Kinnah, Ha-Levi says he is a tanim, hyena, providing eulogies for Jerusalem, an idea Maharam reiterates in his 5th line. Finally, since Ha-Lavi asks how light can be sweet to the eyes, Maharam says it would be sweeter than honey to the mouth to drink tears, and more pleasant to the eyes than anything else (ln. 22-23).
What is most striking about the Kinnah, though, is not its literary sparkle, but rather its radical theology, which is conveyed through the content of the Kinnah. The theological assertions of the Kinnah are hidden, however, and only through a close reading will the reader appreciate its stance. This essay will explore three major theological topics, broadly speaking, which Maharam investigates. First, whether the burning of the Talmud can be seen as evidence of a larger claim that the Christian religion has replaced, subverted or become the new form of Judaism. Second, whether the burning of the Talmud rebuts the notion that the God of the Jew is omniscient, omnipotent, and always present and engaged in the affairs of the world. Third, the role the Christians are supposed to play in the moment of the redemptive future.
Has Christianity Replaced Judaism?
Since the founding of Christianity, that faith has presented itself as the true representation of the wishes of God, having replaced Judaism as the system of belief that God truly desired. Maharam addresses this argument, technically called supersessionism, in three ways. First, he explains that the Oral Law and the Talmud, not the Christian Scriptures, are the true legacy and interpretation of the Written Law. Second, he expresses how Judaism is the true, more prominent religion, and how Christianity’s centrality in the Middle Ages should not be seen as proof that it is the correct faith. Third, he bemoans the fact that the process of the burning of the Talmud brings with itself failures of Jewish law as well; the law within the Talmud cannot function properly when the Talmud has been burnt.
Oral Law and Written Law
Historians have noted that one of the reasons the Christians burned the Talmud was because the very existence of the Talmud challenged the notion that Christianity had replaced Judaism and rendered it out-of-date. Christians believed that the Christian Scriptures, what they call the “New” Testament, was the authoritative interpretation of our Tanakh, and so Christian interpretation of the Bible was the valid interpretation of the words of God for a modern era. No other interpretation of the Hebrew Bible was valid.[6] The very existence of the Talmud complicates this Christian contention, because it exists as an alternative – and to the Jew a more valid – interpretation of the Hebrew scriptures, composed after the Christian scriptures! Burning the Talmud, thus, was not just designed to punish and convey a practical harm to the Jews, it also advanced a theology that was counter to Judaism, which centered the Christian Scriptures as the authoritative interpretation of the Hebrew Bible.
Maharam seems to be aware of this contention, and in this Kinnah he often returns to the question of one text replacing the other, challenging and countering the Christian view. Line 16 explicitly asks “I shall ask, is there a new Torah, for that reason your pages were burned?” Similarly, in Line 18, the Kinnah asks regarding the burning, “is this the fitting recompense for your doubled nature?”[7] For the Maharam, the double-nature of the Torah refers to its inclusion of both an oral law and a written law, not to the Christians’ old and new scriptures. The controversy erupted because the Torah is doubled, and the Kinnah questions how the burning of the Talmud can be a fitting effect of the dual nature of the Torah.
The Primary Religion
The Jewish theology of the ideal world is one where the other nations recognize the truth of Judaism, and therefore give Jews and Judaism a primary position compared to other faiths. The Kinnah highlights how, at the time of the disputation over the Talmud and the burning of the Talmud, this, too, was inverted, with Christianity positioning itself as the faith that had been chosen by God and Judaism relegated to a lesser, inferior status.
One example of Christianity claiming primary status at the time of the Talmud’s burning is the primacy of the Christian courts. Line 8 bemoans how the Christians “sit in great haughtiness to judge sons of God[8] in your laws….” The Christians sit in calm and quiet while “the faces of my young youths have been covered with your thorns” (ln. 7, based on Proverbs 24:31). Jewish Law prohibits Jews from taking their disputes before Christian courts because doing so provides honor to a foreign deity (Rashi, Exodus 21:1), and here the Jews are judged in a foreign court. Yet in exile, the Jew has no choice but to honor the summons to the Christian tribunal to defend the Talmud from those prosecuting it.
Inversions of Jewish Law
If the wrong faith is seen as the true faith, then the natural consequence is that Jewish Law no longer functions in the way it is supposed to. For that reason, the Kinnah also explores ways in which the burning of the Talmud did not just represent the destruction of the physical record of Jewish law, but also the inversion of Jewish law itself. The artifact containing the law was destroyed, at the same moment the law, itself, became perverted. Line 20 notes that the idea of a burning in a Jewish city square is reserved for the burning of an idolatrous city (Devarim 13:17), yet here the Talmud is burned as if it were idolatry.[9] Adding insult to injury, the perpetrators are forbidden even from marrying into the Jewish people,[10] yet here they consider themselves above the law that excludes them.
The Kinnah also portrays the inversion of Jewish law by using words that appear in the Talmud to mean something disturbingly different from what they mean in their Talmudic context. Regarding the Sabbath prohibition of burning, the Talmud states, “hav’arah lehaleik yatz’ah” (Shabbat 70a), which is a technical legal principle that the Sabbath prohibition of burning is separate from other Sabbath violations, such that each violation requires its own sin-offering.[11] This rather arcane ruling, only relevant to the sacrificial order when the Temple stood, is not relevant to the Kinnah; what is important is how the phrase is a piece of Oral Law, explaining a confusing verse in the Written Law. Maharam uses the same words in Line 31 of the Kinnah, in order to ask the Torah to wear sackcloth, on the occasion of the “burning that went out to divide [you].” The translation of the phrase is awkward, as Maharam is trying to preserve the uninterrupted wording of the Talmudic phrase at the expense of making the line easy to read. The sense of the line in the Kinnah is that the fire was destructive, dividing books or hearts. The words are part of the Oral Law, but in the Kinnah they cease to function as they are intended, serving now as a depiction of the burning and not as an explication of the Torah. Instead of explaining the Torah, the Talmud can now only explain our tragedy.
Rabbi Meir of Rottenberg turns to Mount Sinai and reflects on how the themes and ideas associated with the giving of the Torah have also become their own opposites. Though these lines do not directly address Jewish law, they highlight how, with the burning of the Talmud, things appear to exist as the exact opposite of their intended purpose. For example, Maharam asks in lines 11-12 why Sinai was chosen at the same time God rejected the greater mountains for the giving of the Torah (Sotah 5a). Normally this is connected to God’s humility, and so Sinai is a symbol for the positive character trait of human humility. Yet, the burning of the Talmud suggests the Torah was given on a lowly mountain as a typology for the fact that one day the Torah, through the Talmud, would be lowered from its place of honor, during its burning, a symbol for a negative future. Similarly, Maharam wonders whether the Torah was given through a fire in the first place (Deuteronomy 5:19) in order to signal that one day the Torah would be burnt in a fire (line 10). The Torah was given in a consuming fire by a God compared to a devouring fire (Deuteronomy 4:24, Yoma 21b) as a sign of its glory, and now it is burned in human fire as a sign of its frailty, while the sinners have not been burned by the flaming coals of God’s blaze (line 6).
Is the God of the Jews still Engaged in the World?
Even were one to reject the idea that Christianity had replaced Judaism, the very fact that the Talmud was burned would seem to challenge the idea that the God of the Jews retained any power over the affairs of the world. Maharam addresses this theological claim on two levels, addressing both whether God had departed from the world, and whether God has foreknowledge of future events.
Departed from the world
A major theological question of the Ninth of Av, explored in many of the Kinnot, is the feeling of the absence of God from the world in the time of destruction and the perceived defeat and forsakenness of the Jewish people.[12] Maharam addresses this point, adding how the downtrodden state of the Diaspora Jew is seen by our enemies as proof of the absence of the God of the Jews compared to the god of the Christians.
Maharam voices this seemingly heretical claim through allusion to a series of Biblical verses which speak of absence and departure. Three lines in the Kinnah, excerpted below, work off of three Biblical verses.
- Proverbs 7:19-20 is directly quoted in line 25 “[For the man is not in his home,] he took his money belt, and traveled along a faraway journey.” This verse is connected to God by Sanhedrin 96b.
- Jeremiah 9:9, from the Haftarah of the 9th of Av, which speaks of the departure and absence of life from Israel (as explained by Yoma 54a), is referenced in line 24, “my mercy burns[13] for the departure of your husband,” God (see Isaiah 54:5).
- Isaiah 49:21, as line 26 explains, “I am like an individual whose children have perished and who is lonely [without a spouse] from them, having been left alone, like a mast at the top of the mountain of your towers.”[14]
For the Christians, the very fact that they could judge the Jew and destroy the Talmud is evidence of the rejection of Israel and of the fact that the God of the Jews is no longer present or active in the affairs of humanity. The God of the Jews was either powerless to act, absent, or indifferent to the suffering of the Jews. Maharam gives voice to that claim, and notes that he emotionally feels the inherent critique offered by the Christians. Though he still believes in God, and compares God’s absence to a spouse who has departed and not to a spouse who has died or left permanently (see Rashi to Lamentations 1:1), he still feels lonely, as God’s presence is no longer felt.
God’s Omniscience
Another claim by the Christians in response to the Talmud burning is that the God of the Jews is not omniscient. A famous Midrash in Bereishit Rabba (27:4) also features the heretical claim that God lacks foreknowledge of the future. The midrash reads:
An Epicurean once asked Rabbi Yehoshua ben Korkha, saying to him: do you not say that the Holy-One-Blessed-Is-He sees the future? He replied: We do. He asked, but does the verse not say that he was saddened to His heart [before the flood]? He replied [by asking the Epicurean] – have you ever had a son? He replied, yes. He then asked, and what did you do? He replied – I was happy and made others happy. [Rabbi Yehoshua] asked: but did you not also know that he would die?
In this Midrash, the heretic looks at God’s pain at the destruction of humanity as evidence that God did not know the future; any eternal being that knows all of time at once would not experience a change in emotion at the failure of His creations. The Rabbinic reply is that each time calls for its own emotion, even if it might be temporary and might eventually be replaced by other emotions. This reply might not be philosophically sufficient – though a human being celebrates during happy times and is sad at sad times, knowing that each time is temporary, this is a harder idea to apply to God! Indeed, Maimonides (Yesodei Ha-Torah 1:11-12) seems to have a different solution for the heretic’s problem. Yet, for our purposes, it suffices to note this parable of the father and the celebration of his son captures one of the problems around God’s omniscience.
Maharam paraphrases this Midrash in his Kinnah (lines 12-14): “a parable about a king who cried at his son’s party, foreseeing that he would die…. Instead of a cloak, Sinai, wear a sack, the garb of a widow.” Here, Maharam responds to the polemical claim of the lack of God’s foreknowledge by indicating that God foresaw the burning of the Talmud already at Sinai. However, his viewpoint runs counter to the presentation of the aforementioned Midrash, as the sadness of the burning of the Talmud now clouds the occasion of the giving of the Torah. Instead of having joy at that time of joy, mourning is brought back to the moment of Sinai. Maharam knows the Christian claim and affirms that it is not true; God clearly foresaw the burning of the Talmud in the past. But the Talmud’s burning impacts the earlier rejoicing of the giving of the Torah because God foresaw this tragedy even in that joyful moment of the past.
Role of non-Jews in the redemptive future
Maharam’s Kinnah doesn’t explicitly sketch a future vision for what the world will look like when this time of tragedy has passed. Such a sketch would be inappropriate given the genre of this lament; the 9th of Av is not a time for hopeful dreams of tomorrow, and the pain is too close to give voice to a better time. Yet, two allusions suggest a radical theological vision for what Maharam thought would follow this time of tragedy.
Grabbing at the coattails
Zecharya’s vision of redemption, spanning his 7th and 8th chapter and focused on a future when the 9th of Av will no longer be a time of sadness, says that at the time of the redemptive future, all of the nations will grab the cloak of the Jew,[15] wishing to study Torah with him (8:23). Zecharya’s vision echoes a vision found across Isaiah (see 2:1-4 et al.), that the Messianic future includes a time when gentiles will study the Torah from Jews, although Zecharya adds that this vision will happen at a time when the fasts are no longer days of tragedy.
Maharam writes (line 24) that he wishes to shed tears for all those who grab the cloak of the Torah. Goldschmidt believes the line alludes to the moment when Saul grabbed Samuel’s cloak (I Samuel 15:27),[16] but that story fails to connect to Torah study, the theme of the Kinnah. A better explanation would seem to be that, at a moment when the other nations reject the Torah, Maharam cries for the loss of the Torah both from the Jews as well as from those very nations who ought to be grabbing the coattails of the Jew to study Torah and Talmud. Thus, at a time when Christians sat triumphantly over the Jews and would arrest and persecute them, Maharam hints to a vision of the future which would reflect a radical shift, and cries for those righteous gentiles who would then wish to study Torah. Theologically, the relationship of the gentile and the Torah should be one of patient study, not burning rage.
Christians in the Hills of Ephraim
The last three lines of the Kinnah contain Maharam’s hope for the consolation of Israel, although at first glance, they do not connect at all to the argument with the Christians that so pervades the rest of the Kinnah:
Commensurate with the days of your affliction (Psalms 90:15) your Rock shall console you, and shall return the captivity (Jeremiah 30:3)[17] of the tribes of Jeshurun, and lift your lowliness. Again, you shall dress in ornamental garments of scarlet and take a tambourine, going in dance, rejoicing in your dances. My heart will rise at the time that your Rock shall be a light for you (Isaiah 60:19), illuminating your darkness and giving light to your cloud of darkness. (ln. 33-35)
This ending to the Kinnah comes full circle to the third line of the Kinnah, which had described the Jews of the time as sitting in darkness without light, hoping for the light of day to dawn upon them, an idea also repeated in line 29.
The ending alludes to the 31st chapter of Jeremiah, the Haftarah for the second day of Rosh Hashanah, the holiday in the Jewish calendar that immediately follows the 9th of Av. Jeremiah 31:3 reads, “Again, you shall be ornamented with your tambourine, and go out in the dance of those that play.” Maharam uses all but one of the six Hebrew words in this clause in his penultimate line. Jeremiah often uses the word “od,” “again” or “furthermore,” to capture the reality that in the time of the redemption, the people will again do the things they had previously done before exile, and Maharam uses the word in the same way.[18]
Though most Kinnot conclude with a turn to the consolations of Isaiah, one could hardly object to the use of Jeremiah’s prophecy of redemption. Yet, use of the vision of a return to dance and tambourine seems largely disconnected with the heavy polemical content around the burning of the Talmud. Also, it focuses the reader on a rather small piece of the redemption, and not on the wider themes of a rebuilt Jerusalem, peace, Jewish sovereignty, or the freedom to study Torah. Indeed, Maharam seems oddly captivated by this one vision, as line 27 notes that at his time of mourning he no longer (“od”) listened to singers and tambourine players.[19] It is noteworthy that Maharam references the same prophecy of Jeremiah twice, once in mourning and once in hope for consolation.
What did Maharam have in mind? I would suggest that Maharam really intended to allude to a verse in Jeremiah that follows 31:3, but could not do so explicitly – either because of concern of antisemitic reprisals, because the theological implications would be so dramatic, or because the idea was not appropriate for the 9th of Av. Jeremiah 31:5 reads: “Because there is a day when the watchmen will call in the Mountains of Ephraim, ‘Let us Rise up and go up to Zion, to Hashem our God.’” For centuries, Jews have noted that the word for watchman in the verse in Biblical Hebrew, “notzerim,” is also the word used in Mishnaic Hebrew for the Christians.[20] In that case, the verse can be taken to refer to a future time when the Christians, not just the watchmen, will say that the time has come for them to go to Zion to visit Hashem, the God of the Jews.
The idea is tantalizing and fitting for his context, but Maharam couldn’t give it explicit voice, and so he left an allusion in the text, hoping the reader would understand. The fitting conclusion to the events of the burning of the Talmud would be the moment when even the Christians would ascend to Jerusalem to study Torah there. The idea was so close, though the moment seemed so far, and Maharam seized upon this vision to conclude his Kinnah.
Conclusion
On the 9th of Av, we typically focus on the emotions of the Kinnot – their powerful poetry and their gripping themes. But in the case of the Kinnah of the Maharam, the Kinnah also considers major philosophical principles of Judaism as well, investigating the role of the Oral Law, God’s continued presence in the world, and the role the other nations play in the Messianic era. The reader might be too tired to appreciate all of the ideas on Tisha B’Av itself, but Maharam put the words into his lament, to be considered by future generations.
[1] For a brief summary of the historical background and Maharam’s role in commemorating the event, see E.E. Urbach, Ba’alei Ha-Tosafot: Toldoteyhem, Hibureyhem, Shitotam, (Jerusalem, Bialik Institute, 1954), 448-455.
[2] The Hebrew word used here, “evil,” means a fool throughout the Bible, and that is clearly the meaning of the word in Proverbs 26:11 which is the source of this phrase “Like a dog who returns to his vomit, is a fool who repeats his foolishness.” It is challenging to determine who the referent of the pronoun “he” is in this line. Moses broke the tablets while the Christians burnt the Talmud. God may have been the ultimate cause of both events, but the lamenter would not call God’s actions foolish.
[3] These two short words serve as a play on words to Deuteronomy 33:2 where the Torah is called “a law from fire.” The two words are inverted here, as God’s original intent has been inverted, and the Torah from fire is now the Torah burnt in fire. The phrase “law from fire” also appears earlier in the Kinnah in line 9.
[4] The word u-shelom also begins Ha-Levi’s 3rd line and Maharam’s 4th.
Ha-Levi is addressing Tzion, Jerusalem, while Maharam is addressing the Torah, “she who is burnt in fire”; Ha-Levi calls the Jewish people those bound (asirayikh), while Maharam calls the Jewish people those who mourn (aveilayikh), but the idea is the same.
[5] The two words “eikh ye’erav” appear prominently elsewhere in Ha-Levi’s poetic oeuvre, as the final two words of the second line of the poem libbi ba-mizrah.
[6] See Urbach and also see David Berger, “Christians, Gentiles, and the Talmud” (158-176) in Persecution, Polemic, and Dialogue (Boston: Academic Studies Press, 2010), 159. Though this line of reasoning is not central in the polemical tracts related to the disputation over the Talmud, it is clearly present, even if only in the background, and was clearly on Maharam’s mind when he composed his lament.
[7] “Tashlum k’feilayikh” puns off of the Jewish legal concept where some victims of theft are paid back double-value for the item stolen, but in this context it refers to the doubled nature of the Torah, not the doubled payment.
[8] The Jewish people are here called the sons of God, on the basis of Deuteronomy 14:1-2. Calling the Jews the children of God in an anti-Christian polemic is clearly daring, because the Christians considered one of their deities the true ‘son’ of God. See Yaakov Jaffe, “Who Was the First Jewish Commentator to Connect Psalm 50 With Christianity?” Jewish Bible Quarterly 51:3, for further discussion.
[9] Even in an idolatrous city, ‘shelal shamayim,’ essentially holy objects, are never burned (Sanhedrin 112b), yet in this case the Torah, ‘shelal elyon,’ was still burned.
[10] The Torah blocks four particular nations from entering into the Jewish community: Egypt, Edom, Moav, and Bnei-Amon. Christendom is often identified with Edom, so that may be why Maharam includes French Christians in the prohibition. According to technical Jewish law, only definite biological descendants of Edom are forbidden, and only for the first two generations after conversion. Therefore, Daniel Goldschmidt, The Order of the Kinnot for the Ninth of Av [Hebrew] (Jerusalem: Mossad Harav Kook, 1972), 136-137 believes this line “that you are disgusted from entering your congregation” refers to Lamentations 1:10 rather than to the rules about marrying Jews in Deuteronomy, but in that case it is not clear how this relates to Medieval Christians.
[11] As a result, an individual who violated Shabbat in 39 major ways would need to bring 39 sin offerings.
Maharam makes reference to this principle in his commentary to Yoma 40b s.v. “mah.” Maharam is the author of the Tosafot printed on every page of Yoma, and in that way his own words of Torah teaching today have actually become ensconced as a part of the Talmud itself, in a way, though it would not yet have been true at the time of the Talmud’s burning.
[12] This topic is discussed in the 9th stanza of the Kinnah of the 24 priestly families (“the captain of the ship has ascended above”), the 7th stanza of the Kinnah of the Temple vessels (“where is the Master of these things?”), the 5th stanza of the Kinnah of the first crusade (“and they shall say ‘where is their God’ “), and throughout the Kinnah about Titus’s visit to the holiest of holies.
[13] These two words are borrowed from Genesis 43:30. For a translation of this word see Yaakov Jaffe “Shavat Suru: The First Kinnah, Matter and Form” at thelehrhaus.com. In this context, it seems Maharam intends the word to mean providing heat, because he says his tears evaporate as they roll down his cheek because of the burning emotion he feels.
[14] The translation of “galmud” as bereft of a spouse is based on Malbim to Isaiah. The speaker thus feels lonely without their children, and without the spouse of the Jewish people, the God who has seemingly traveled away as depicted in the previous line.
The idea of a lonely mast on a mountain comes from Isaiah 30:17. It is hard to understand what a mast, normally part of a ship, would be doing sitting on top of a mountain, both in the verse and in the Kinnah.
The word ‘migdal,’ or tower, is not found in Isaiah, and is an addition of Maharam to match the needs of the meter and the rhyme. The word provides ghostly foreshadowing, as Maharam would decades later be held captive in the Christian prison tower of Ensisheim, himself a victim of Christian antisemitism. See Maharam’s concluding note to his commentary to the 9th chapter of Ohalot.
[15] Maharam uses the word “me’il” here, to match the needs of the rhyme, the same word used above regarding the cloak of Sinai, though the verse in Zecharya reads “kanaf,” a somewhat common word for clothing in the Bible.
[16] Goldschmidt, The Order of the Kinnot for the Ninth of Av, 136-137.
[17] For some discussion of the translation of this phrase see Mitchell First, “‘Be-Shuv Hashem et Shivat Tziyon’: A Widely Misunderstood Biblical Phrase” Hakirah 34 (2023), 309-317.
[18] See Jeremiah 31:3 (two times), 31:4, 32:15, 33:10, 33:12. The aforementioned prophecy of Zecharya similarly makes allusion to this array of Jeremiah’s prophecies by using the word “od” in the same way (8:4, 8:20).
[19] Line 27 is challenging to translate for two reasons. Firstly, it speaks of the “tof” of your “halil,” typically translated tambourine and flute, but the translation “tambourine of your flute” is nonsensical. Second, it notes that the chords of these instruments have been detached, but these instruments are not string instruments. Goldschmidt makes note of the problem, and just says the language should be read non-specifically.
[20] Sanhedrin 43a makes a similar point, although using a different Biblical verse; see Jaffe, “Psalm 50.” Abrabanel to Jeremiah reads that the intended meaning of the verse was to refer to the Christians, although he lived after Maharam composed this Kinnah. Translation of the word also caused some confusion in the 1997 Diaspora Competition of the Chidon Ha-Tanach; see Mifkedey Katzin Chinuch Ve-Gadna Rashi, Chidon Ha-Tanach Ha-Olami Le-Noar Yehudi Ha-Shloshim Ve-Arbaah (Defus Ayalon, Jerusalem, 1997), 110, where the translation of notzerim in Jeremiah 31:5 had to be supplied, to avoid a mistranslation indicating Christians.
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